Which Edmonton Oilers forward will become Connor McDavid's right-hand man next season?

Todd McLellan refuses to pigeon-hole Leon Draisaitl when asked if he’s going to be the second-line centre to Connor McDavid or the first-line right-winger alongside the captain next season.

“Leon’s a forward,” said the Edmonton Oilers coach. “It’s a tremendous luxury we have. Leon and Connor were the pair that produced the most (together) from a certain point in the season on, but when we put Leon in the middle he did a tremendous job against a very good player in (Ryan) Getzlaf.”

So McLellan, who loved being able to play Joe Pavelski at centre or the wing in San Jose when he coached the Sharks, isn’t tipping his hand.

Draisaitl finished eighth in NHL scoring, in large part riding the right side with McDavid. But off Draisaitl’s inspired play against the Ducks in Games 5 through 7, especially his four-point, three-goal effort in Game 6 at Rogers Place, a tag-team at centre with McDavid is akin to Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh.

So if Draisaitl’s back to his normal position, who plays right wing with McDavid?

Do they need a veteran there – say a free-agent signing like T.J. Oshie? – or can it be like Crosby in Pittsburgh, who’s had a revolving door of wingers in the Penguins top line. Right now, speedy Bryan Rust is on right wing with Crosby but rookie Jake Guentzel and smurf Conor Sheary have played with him and both sides.

No, Phil Kessel.

Crosby doesn’t care who’s with him. He’s so good, he makes it work.

If Jordan Eberle is back and isn’t traded this summer, he might get a look there. But could it be Drake Caggiula, who got a taste with McDavid late in the playoffs and had three goals in his last four games, or Finnish teenager Jesse Puljujarvi, who played 29 games with the Oilers and 39 in Bakersfield in his first North American season?

The thing about today’s NHL is young players can step right in and make contributions, as Caggiula did this year, and as Jake Guentzel emphatically has with the Penguins. So, too, the kids in Toronto did this past season. Not just Auston Matthews or Mitch Marner, but William Nylander.

So maybe they can give Caggiula a shot there. McDavid’s already given him the seal of approval.

“He skates well and he’s got good offensive instincts and he shoots,” said McDavid. “The main thing is he competes, though. He battles so hard. For somebody who may be classified as under-sized, he doesn’t play like it.”

One Western Conference coach said while watching Caggiula: “He’s got lot of courage.”

He plays like Guentzel, who is the same size and somebody he played against often in college.

“You have to stay hungry and keep fighting for higher positions (on the roster),” said Caggiula. “I’d like to use my shot more but what I found was it’s a tough league where my shots were getting deflected or going up into the netting.

“That was a missed opportunity. In college, I had to learn to find the lanes to shoot, and I have to do it in the NHL, too.”

He’s always said he warms to his situation and gets better. It happened in college.

“I think I started to figure out the pro game later in the season and was getting a lot more production,’ he said.

And the opposing players started to notice him, which is always a good thing.

“Yeah, hopefully you can leave a mark and let people know you’re for real,” he said.

Going into last season, the feeling was Puljujarvi might fit there, but he was in over his head at 18. After scoring in his first NHL game, he went 28 in a row without a goal before heading down to the Bakersfield farm, where he had 12 goals and 16 points in his 39 games. So far, he’s not showing he’s a scorer. Maybe he’s not going to be one, even with hishard shot. He had 24 assists and 13 goals in 68 pro games.

The Oilers refused to bring him back after sending him down, in part because he was on the top line in the AHL and the Condors were trying to make the playoffs. They could have made him one of the black aces during the playoffs, but the extra young forwards were J.J. Khaira and Iiro Pakarinen, He went back to Finland to play for their world championship team but isn’t getting much work there. He’ll likely be somewhere in the Oilers’ top nine next season, but first-line right wing seems a real stretch.

Maybe the Oilers could find a player for right wing in free agency July 1, but they are probably in more need of a cheaper third-line centre with good faceoff skills if they’re signing somebody.

The best name out there is Oshie, 30. He makes $4.175 million now and the Washington Capitalsmay not have the dough to re-sign him. The Oilers wanted to draft Oshie in 2004 but the Blues gotto him with the 24th-overall pick and Edmonton went for Andrew Cogliano at No. 25.

“I can’t speak to the 700 players in the league but there may be some this summer who look at us, and I can’t think of a better home when you think about the Katz family and what they’ve done, the players we’ve assembled,” said McLellan. ” If all continues, we have a bright future.”

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